During emergency disease incidents, rapid diagnosis of the pathogen involved is critical to mounting an effective response. Because each laboratory does not have a complete range of diagnostic capability, often a specialist laboratory needs to be identified to assist in the diagnosis. Currently, there is no database of laboratories or their diagnostic abilities. Identification of alternative laboratories is done on an ad hoc basis, and often when the information is required rapidly, the best alternative laboratory is not identified.
In recent times, there have been actual examples of diagnosis being delayed by samples being sent to an inappropriate laboratory. This project will result in a readily accessible database with an up-to-the-minute listing of laboratories, their diagnostic capabilities and capacities, the range of techniques that they have available to diagnose each pathogen and their level of accreditation.
In Australia, each aquatic animal health laboratory has limited resources and it is not cost-effective to have all laboratories develop the full range of diagnostic capability. However,it is not desirable to send samples to overseas laboratories especially in the case of suspect exotic disease. The solution to this resource dilemma is to create a network of diagnostic laboratories within Australia. The first step in achieving this network is to conduct a stocktake of current capability and capacity and subsequently making the information gathered available to all laboratories.